


tonight, it's too quiet

by ClementineStarling



Category: True Detective
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, post-carcosa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:48:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4763882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineStarling/pseuds/ClementineStarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has tasted death, the utter silence of the void, and it's still ringing inside him, every time he shuts his eyes, it's that same <em>nothing</em> waiting for him. And every morning he wakes like a drowning man.</p><p>It doesn't take Marty too long to realise something is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tonight, it's too quiet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackeyedblonde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/gifts).



> For the grande dame of this ship who asked for post-Carcosa porn.  
> Your wish is my command, my Lady! It's only a snippet, and I'm not sure it makes any sense at all, but I hope at least the smut-factor is to your satisfaction. :*
> 
> Title taken from Kristin Hersh's [Your Ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g26ed_ujqcM)

-

At last the dreams have stopped.  
The nights have become quiet again, and dark.  
Sleep lies in Rust's mind, calm as a lake in everlasting twilight, waters of oblivion to dive into at will.

But it's this emptiness that scares the hell out of him.  
He has tasted death, the utter silence of the void, and it's still ringing inside him, and every time he shuts his eyes, it's that same _nothing_ waiting for him. And every morning he wakes like a drowning man.

It doesn't take Marty too long, to realise something is wrong.

They've hardly put up the new sign for Hart & Cohle Investigations, when he remarks on it over morning coffee: “You look like crap, Rust. Even worse than before we—” He stops. Can't bring himself to say: _Before we went to Carcosa. Before you almost died in my arms._ The memory is still fresh, for both of them. “Before we solved the case”, he continues, although none of them ever felt like they truly solved anything. 

“This is a world where nothing is solved”, Rust used to say, same lament, over and over, in countless hours on the highway, and Marty – with the same regularity – only laughed at him. But now, at last, he knows how he feels. Like catching the gate-keeper of a cemetery, the henchman instead of the actual murderers, who may – or may not – still roam free. 

“I don't sleep”, Rust says without looking up from his case file. 

“You just dream?”, Marty retorts, a little amused he still knows all of Rust's overly-dramatic lines. 

“Nope. Don't dream anymore”, says Rust and still doesn't look up.

Marty needs a moment to process this information. “So what's the problem then?”

And this time Rust does look up, hollow-eyed, skin stretching over the sharp bones of his skull, he looks like death itself as he says: “I cannot go back there. Into the dark.”

It's not what Marty has expected.  
Afterwards he doesn't know how they ended up hugging, but they did, Rust clutching at him as if he's a fucking lifeline, some sort of anchor to reality. 

They're both aware of the symptoms of PTSD, and Marty thinks, it's no wonder, Rust has finally cracked, after all he's been through. They decide, it's perhaps best to move in together, until the dust has settled, and they've both healed a bit. Mentally that is.

Marty pretends this decision has nothing to do with the fact he hates being alone and it's comfortably reassuring to lie in bed, listening to Rust rummaging around in the kitchen at entirely unholy hours of the day, and being finally lured out of bed by the delicious scent of fresh coffee. It is almost civilised, this new life of his.

He has never been much in favour of silence, but the quiet they share on these early mornings, when outside the fog still hangs deep over the world, and the day has not yet revealed itself-- it would be perfect. If only Rust wasn't fading away before his eyes, growing paler and more transparent by the day. 

He has stopped drinking, that's at least something, but otherwise, Marty can't see much of a progress. The man has become a mere shadow of his former self, and it drives him crazy that can't do anything about it. 

As the weeks pass, he catches himself touching Rust more and more often, as if to feel for himself that he is still there, not an actual ghost, a figment of his imagination. And Rust, he seems to meet his hands which much the same intention, as if he were more substantial when touched, less prone to dissolving like mist under the sun. It becomes a habit to brush against each other when passing in the hallway, seeking the contact rather than avoiding it. 

Then comes a night, that is particularly dark and quiet, so dark and quiet, even Marty is stirred from his usually sound sleep by the bottomless, soundless void of its blackness. It is like staring into the desolation of space, when he opens his eyes, a nightmare that is real, a reality that is usually concealed by the limitations of the human mind, but in this very moment the veil has been lifted and he _sees_.

It takes him hardly a second to find the light switch, but nonetheless his heart is racing like mad, the pulse is pounding in his ears. What the fuck, he thinks, or says it out loud, and before he is even aware of it, he has pushed the blanket aside and practically jumped out of the bed.

He finds the kitchen with the certainty of a sleepwalker, and Rust leaning against the counter with a glass of water in his hand. “Can't sleep?”, he asks, his eyes almost burning in his skull, but Marty decides not to see it, instead only mutters a vague affirmation, grabs a glass from the shelf and leans over Rust to get to the sink-- nothing unusual considering their current level of familiarity. But this time, Rust's hand shoots out and curls around his neck, dragging him closer to his lips. The heat of his breath feverish as he whispers: “You've seen it too, haven't you?”

“Let go of me, Rust”, he says but for all his skinniness the man is still rather strong. It's almost a struggle to wrest himself free. “What the fuck is going on?”

“It's the void”, Rust breathes, eyes wide, and Marty begins to seriously doubt whether even one of them is awake, so he shakes Rust by the shoulder, just for good measure. 

And this time Rust lets him, allows himself to be shaken like a rag doll, suddenly all tension gone out of him. When Marty lets go, he simply falls against him, and Marty can't help but catch him. “Tell me what's going on, Rust”, he says, as soothingly as he can, a bit like he used to talk with Audrey and Maisie, when they were little and, woken by bad dreams, came sneaking into their parents' bed in the middle of the night.

But Rust only stares blankly at him, as if he's indeed just woken from a nightmare. “Don't know what you mean, man” he mumbles and tries to shuffle off, but Marty has enough of this shit, and he won't settle for another lame excuse. 

“Wait”, he says, seizing Rust's arm, pulling him back, and then something happens, Marty has not quite counted on: Rust's hand lands on his cheek, cupping it in what, fuck, is almost reverence, and there is something weird in his eyes, not like the gleam of insanity, but, perhaps, affection, and then he tilts his head and – time slows down, congeals into something that makes Marty forget how to breathe, a viscid feeling in his lungs – his lips brush against Marty's. Gingerly. Shy. Almost brotherly. Almost...

It jerks something awake in him, a sensation like hunger, uncoiling in his belly, ever familiar and ever strange. 

Then it's already over, and Rust turning away, and again Marty says “Wait”, only this time his voice is crumbling, brittle and rough and akin to desperate, because rarely anything has ever felt so right. Because for one glorious moment, there was no darkness and no void, only the dazzling radiance of light, and Marty knows now how they can ignite that fire. 

And Rust does indeed allow him to kiss the glow back into his body, a blaze kindled and fanned by every move of Marty's lips and tongue against his mouth. It's as if he thaws under his hands, warming ever so slowly to his touch, and Marty wants to have him hot and bothered and positively on fire, melting, if he can, and fuck, he does give his best. Kisses Rust until he makes the most amazing little sounds, and he shifts into him, impatiently, the shape of his cock pressing into Marty alien at first, but growing more familiar by the second.

A new kind of need is hatching within Marty, less different from any other desire than he would have thought, more like an unknown flavour, that is odd at first, but then simply delicious. 

He runs his hands over Rust's torso that is all sharp and angular where he is used to curves, a ragged landscape to map out with his hands, terra incognita, and yet not at all, for what Rust does in return is mirror his movements and touches, and it is strangely soothing that at least physically they are not so different.

After they've peeled each other out of their boxers and t-shirts, Marty pushes Rust onto the living room sofa, unimpressed by his yelp of protest and his attempt to drag him down with him and on top of him, and continue the kissing and groping and grinding into each other.

“Lie still, damn it”, he growls, before he sets to begin his exploration in earnest, licks a path over the long line of Rust's neck, down the plunge of his collarbone, lavishes a lot of attention on his nipples, sucks them into hard nubs, and Rust trembles so prettily at the sensation, twists and groans, surprisingly sensual for all his usual austerity, and Marty has to stay him with the splay of fingers over his stomach, hold him down.

He would have expected more twisting and turning, when he reaches his cock – astonishingly delightful, flushed and hard and begging for his touch – but that's when Rust stills, his ragged breathing and the way his fingers clutch at the sofa the only tell-tales of his tension, and he stays that way when he tastes him, when he runs his tongue along the silky skin, hesitantly at first, then in more confident, long sweeps, from the swell of his balls over the lenght of vein up to the mushroom head, and it's only when he closes his lips completely around Rust, that he makes another sound, a bone-wrenching, heart-splitting noise, that goes straight to Marty's own cock in a sudden rush of pleasure. 

He sucks Rust with unprecedented relish, perhaps because somewhere in the back of his old-fashioned mind it still feels somehow forbidden and wrong, and that adds to the excitement, perhaps because it gives him a new, peculiar kind of power, but he suspects it's simply because he genuinely enjoys it: the taste, the texture, the tremors in Rust's thighs, as he is getting close... He'd love to see him come apart under his hands and mouth, actually loves it, he realises, and he feels something inside him unfolding, unfurling, a warm and golden cosiness, with only the faintest edge of sexual desire.

But then words penetrate the fog, pleas, suggestions, of _more_ and _please_ and _Marty_ , shattering that love-drunk serenity, and how could he ever deny such a lovely request? His mouth moves lower, nearly familiar turf again, and he licks him open, so slowly it's almost teasing, and Rust's moans turn into the most beautiful thing, broken, strangled, breathless, as if he aches for him, hurts on the inside without him, at least that's what he tells him, as far as Marty's lust-muddled brain can piece it together. 

All he can think about after that is how lucky it is, he's got all the equipment at hand as he gropes for the lube, a condom--

– and then Rust drags him down onto himself, all greedy hands and frantic mouth and general impatience, and demands “Fuck me already”, and Marty obeys, pushes into him, too careful for Rust's preferences it seems, but then he's always been a mad motherfucker, and Marty only laughs and leans heavy on him and whispers, that he needs to be patient for once, and then he kisses him again, tenderly, gently, like he really means it, even if his body betrays him in a way, as it lets itself be coaxed into Rust's rhythm, into the ecstatic urgency with which he meets every thrust, as if he's actually keen on being broken apart and reassembled again.

“And maybe that's what this is all about”, Marty thinks as he lets himself be pulled into the frenzy of it, “working out a meaning for the confusion of minds and the tangle of limbs, a solution to the riddle that is the fragile balance of light and dark.” 

Well-- in not so many words perhaps, but that would also have been impossible, with the stunning goodness of Rustin Cohle all around him.

Ultimately it might still be the darkness that's winning. But for now they're both ablaze with passion.

_


End file.
